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1166 Journal of Chemical Education October, 1926
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gross
adulterations, but it certainly would not satisfy us in these days. The
fact that metals had different melting points was well-recognized and
used, as Recipe No. 32 on testing tin shows. Pliny also describes this
method in Book XXXIV of the Natural History. This method would indeed
distinguish between tin and lead, but eutectic mixtures must certainly
have deceived some of the workers of those days. This crude method of
determining temperatures is truly indicative of the elemental-}' state
of chemical arts at the opening of the Christian Era.
Writing
and making inscriptions in metallic letters or in characters colored so
as to resemble gold and silver must also have been an important
operation for the workers of that period if the number of the recipes
in the papyrus bearing upon the subject are to be taken as a true
indication. Gold amalgam is used for the purpose in several recipes. A
point worthy of note about these is that no mention is made of heating
the finished writing to drive off the excess mercury. No doubt this was
understood by the workers or transmitted by word of mouth. This fact
well indicates the fragmentary and incomplete character of the
procedures described. Litharge, sulfur, and various organic pigments
and colors were also incorporated with gum water and other mediums to
yield colored writing.
The
last recipes in the papyrus deal with methods of dyeing cloths. Various
vegetable substances were applied to this purpose. There is direct and
indisputable evidence that the necessity and practice of mordanting
cloth previous to dyeing it was well-understood. The fact that the
recipes are usually those for dyeing in purple shows that this papyrus
was probably used in connection with royal or priestly workshops since
the nobility were the only ones then generally permitted to wear
purple. These recipes also expose the common fallacy that the ancient
peoples only obtained their purple from the shellfish murex. They
evidently used other dyes to a larger extent. The fact that the dyeing
of cloths is so little touched upon in the Leyden Papyrus X and was of
such importance in ancient chemical arts leads us to believe that the
papyrus gives us only a partial view of the state of ancient chemical
art. The Stockholm Papyrus is really volume II of the set for in it
very little space is given over to metallic arts while much space is
devoted to dyeing cloths, imitating precious stones, and other
operations not even mentioned in the Leyden Papyrus. As stated before
the writer hopes to publish the contents of the second one in a similar
translation in the near future. The recent finds of numerous papyri in
Egypt may also bring to light those of technical importance and enrich
our knowledge of the early period of chemical history, although there
is a certain degree of improbability about this since it is a known
historical fact that books on alchemical processes and technical arts
were systematically destroyed in Egypt during the first centuries of
the Christian Era.
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